Development of thesauri in Iran.

English abstract

The need for Persian thesauri became apparent during the late 1960s with the advent of documentation centres in Iran. The first Persian controlled vocabulary was published by IRANDOC in 1977. Other centres worked on translations of existing thesauri, but it was soon realised that these efforts did not meet the needs of the centres. After the Islamic revolution in 1979, the foundation of new centres intensified the need for Persian thesauri, especially in the fields of history and government documents. Also, during the Iran-Iraq war, Iranian research centres produced reports in scientific and technical fields, both to support military requirements and to meet society's needs. In order to provide a comprehensive thesaurus, the Council of Scientific Research of Iran approved a project for the compilation of such a work. Nowadays, 12 Persian thesauri are available and others are being prepared, based on the literary corpus and conformity with characteristics of Iranian culture.